


There's Always A Favorite

by emiliaf25 (emiliaf24)



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Best bros Fowler and Hank, Connor & CyberLife Tower Connor | RK800-60 & Upgraded Connor | RK900 are Siblings, DPD shenanigans, Fowler and Hank are absolutely Fandom Olds TM, Fowler and Hank eternal rivals for the position of Best Dad, Gen, Gratuitous Star Wars mentions, Hank Anderson is Connor and Upgraded Connor | RK900's Parent, Too old for this shit solidarity, Upgraded Connor | RK900 Has a Different Name, Upgraded Connor | RK900 and Connor are brothers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-19
Updated: 2019-08-19
Packaged: 2020-09-07 19:33:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20314849
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emiliaf24/pseuds/emiliaf25
Summary: Jeffery had always been apathetic towards androids at best - yelling at and beating the piss out of your walking iPhone wasn't going to fix the employment problem. Then again, he wasn't the Captain of the Police force because he believed in humanities collective common sense.But when one of those walking iPhone's saves your best friend from the brink of self-destruction well...apathy just wasn't gonna cut it anymore....Too bad said best friend was a dumbass and couldn't bare the thought of his robo-son having any other parental figures in his life.A couple of shorts of Fowler and Hank being bros and competing for Best Dad of the Year.





	1. Your Standard Cold Open

Connor may have thought it was his slowly but surely developing social skills and ever dependable nature, but nothing convinced the DPD more of Connor’s deviancy than his tendency to accidentally call Hank Lieutenant Dad and Fowler Captain Father.

“Good work you two,” Captain Fowler said, sincerely, but with enough gruffness to keep from laying it on too thick. Fowler had somehow collected a precinct full of excellent officers that could not  _ wait  _ to be cocky renegades that walked away from explosions in slow motion, so the line he toed from giving praise to encouraging idiocy was thin as fucking toothpicks and twice as brittle. Currently, his latest and most unlikely line of Bad Boy/Rush Hour/21 Jump Street knuckleheads were giving their report of a case they had just closed. “Get the preliminary paperwork done and clock out, you’ve earned it.” He gave Hank, who was leaning in the guest chair and obnoxiously tapping his own fist with a pen, a flat look. “I’ll expect the rest of the paperwork done at least  _ some time _ before next week.”

Connor nodded solemnly from his usual place standing behind Hank. “It’ll be done before 9:30AM tomorrow morning, Captain Father.”

Fowler nodded without missing a beat, Hank continued his steady staccato of  _ Welcome to The Jungle _ on his hand, and Connor left his office with his normal steady stride. The kid’s light was still blue, so he probably hadn’t noticed the slip. Which wasn’t to say that he wouldn’t notice at all. Last time it took a few minutes after he had settled into his desk. Then he had gone through, what Fowler presumed, was multiple stages of embarrassment - whipping his head back to Fowler’s office, LED a solid bright red, expression stretched in abject mortification, frantically checking if anyone else had heard what he said, before finally smacking his head on his desk in defeat.

And speaking of….

_ THUNK _ . “ _ Kamski damn my loose tongue _ ! _ ” _

Fowler rolled his eyes heavenward. He had no need to untint his windows for any context - a sentence he never thought he’d have to say, let alone so many times a day.

“What’s the matter, Jeffery? Jelly that our robo son loves me more?” Hank said, smirking.

“Fuck off, Hank,” he said with the tone of a passerby saying  _ good morning _ , tapping a stack of papers on his desk in clear dismissal of his long time friend’s existence. When his shittiest best Lieutenant and his asshole smirk didn’t leave immediately (not unexpected), Fowler asked with affected casualness; “….Not that I give even a molecular fuck, but what makes you think he likes you any better than me? He calls us both dad all the time.”

“ _ No _ . He calls  _ me  _ Dad. He calls  _ you  _ Father - which is what you call your emotionally distant parent who sent you off to Boarding School for six years and would only communicate with you through sparse letters asking about your grades and awkward family Christmases also asking about your grades.”

“Hmm, interesting,” was all Fowler said to that. A whistle sounded, and Fowler spun in his chair and rolled it to the low filing cabinet that doubled as a table. He turned off the electric kettle and opened one of the deeper drawers, pulling out a handsome red and black wrought iron tea pot and a matching handleless teacup. He pulled out some tea from another drawer and made quick work of dumping the allotted amount of leaves in the filter and the hot water in the teapot. By the time Fowler had swiveled his chair around, teapot and cup in hand, Hank had paused in his pen drum solo and had set his chair back down.

The two of them were silent for a beat. “…whatcha got there, Jeff?” Hank finally said, jerking his chin at the tea set on his desk.

Fowler picked up his cup and gestured at it with exaggerated surprise. “ _ Hm _ ? Oh you mean this right here? Handcrafted with love and attention?” He shrugged. “Just a little gift from Connor, that’s all.”

“Handcrafted…”

“Yup. He said it took him  _ several _ months to figure out how to make this - apparently that’s a ridiculous amount of time spent learning something by android standards - but ya know,” he shrugged. Taking a deliberate sip of tea while maintaining eye contact. “People will go through a lot of shit when they care.”

“Uh huuuh.” Hank crossed his arms, looking around Fowler’s office as if he hadn’t been in there 8 billion times. “What’s that a uh…birthday gift or somethin’?”

“No, it’s just something he thought I’d like.” Folwer said lightly. He plucked a golden pen,  _ J. Fowler _ engraved in sweeping calligraphy in the center, from a walnut and black leather stand. Fowler examined it thoughtfully  unnecessarily , giving it a little waggle before signing some papers. “This one was, though.”

“Psh. Little impersonal compared to the black smith shop he’s apparently started and has hidden in my house somewhere, but I guess they all can’t……is that a tastefully decorated C-3PO design?”

Fowler paused in his writing, which clearly displayed an homage to the patterns on C3P-O’s chassis. “It might be.”

“Didn’t know you were a Star Wars fan.”

“Hmm, well. Connor did.” Fowler coughed, “ _ Asadutifulsonwould _ .” He cleared his throat dramatically. “Ahem! Excuse me.”

“Oh. That’s…cool,” Hank nodded to himself, “Coooool,  _ coolcoolcoolcoolcooooool… _ ”

“Indeed. If there’s nothing else, you should probably get ready to go home soon.”

Hank rolled his eyes and stood up from the chair. “Yea yea…” he started to head for the door.

“Hang on, you’ve got about,” he fished out an antique silver watch from his pocket connected to a delicate chain. “Ten more minutes before you’ll complete your full shift. Clock out then.”

By now Hank had given up any veneer of calmness (not that he was holding it up very well to begin with) and whirled back around, arms slapping his legs as he exploded exasperatedly; “Are you kidding me Jeff? Don’t tell me Connor bought that for you too!”

“Now you’re just being ridiculous. This is an heirloom, Hank. Passed down through out my mother’s side of the family for  _ eight  _ generations.”

“Oh. Well. Sorry I jumped down your throat like that Jeff - ”

“That was previously assumed to be lost for the past 20 years until Connor tracked it down to a thrift shop last Thursday and returned it to us.”

“OH  _ COME ON!! _ ”

##  **…****_.Cue the Brooklyn Nine-Nine Title Music_**


	2. The Duel

“Thanks Hank, I really appreciate what your doin’,” Jeffery said, clearing his throat.

“Yea, yea,” Hank said, brushing off gratitude as was his want. The two of them went waaaaay back. I held your hair back while you vomited into a urinal, I drove all the way to L.A. to pick you up when you got stranded ‘cuz your car got stolen - kinda way back. So the whole ‘ _ thank you oh no thank  _ ** _you_ ** **’ ** song and dance wasn’t necessary between them.

But sometimes the basic touchy-feely shit just needed to be said. Which was fine. They’d probably used up their emotions quota for the year anyway.

“Wasn’t like I was gonna let ya stay at a roach coach motel for a week when I got a perfectly good extra room here,” said Hank, fumbling around for his keys. They were currently at his door, having come back from Jimmy’s, where Hank had convinced his friend to stay with him for a couple of days since his wife was out of town on a Girls Trip™ with her sisters and cousins, and his house was being fumigated.

“You sure Connor won’t mind having his boss under the same roof as him?”

“Naaah, he’ll be good - well. Actually, he’ll probably be all weird and proper for a little bit, but he should be fine once he realizes you ain’t gonna fire him for not having the couch pillows at perfect fluff capacity.”

“Should be?” Jeffery raised his eyebrows. “You didn’t tell him I was coming?”

“Gimmie a break Jeff we decided this shit like five minutes ago - ”

“Three hours ago,” Jeffery deadpanned.

“ - I wasn’t thinking about it. Don’t worry, he won’t mind. He’s a pretty chill guy off the clock, ya know.”

Jeffery gave Hank the look that incorrect statement deserved. Connor was a kind person, yes. A great detective, absolutely. But chill? Connor had  _ zero  _ chill. Connor’s chill was in the negatives, being punched to death alongside injustice and people who ran dog fights. Once, Elijah Kamski had strutted his 120 billion dollar net worth having ass into the department, asking for Connor without an appointment. Everyone had thought, like the rational little homo sapiens that they were, that Connor was simply late to work that day, because he sure as hell wasn’t there for Kamski to harass. Jeffery let thirty minutes pass (pretty generous, considering) of Kamski flitting about being a condescending nuisance, before giving the billionaire the standard “Leave a message for him and he’ll get back to you later now get the fuck out” and shooing him back to his lair, or wherever rich people stayed in their off hours, and that was that. 

For approximately two minutes.

The vent on the ceiling went crashing to the floor with a metallic THUD and a poof of ceiling debris. Connor dropped from the newly made hole, landing nimbly in a crouch, right next to his desk. He stood up, brushed the cement particles and dust off of his hair and pale pink and grey suit jacket, adjusted his tie™, and then sat in his chair and  _ fucking started working _ .

So. No chill.

Even so, Jeffery knew that in general Connor had a pretty even demeanor. Despite his youthful appearance, and the tendency for newly awakened deviants to turn up at all hours in their eternal quest to experience life™, Connor was no party animal (fuck, did kids these days even use that term anymore?). “At least it’ll be quiet,” Jeffery said, thinking about all the construction work being done every god damn morning for what was starting to feel like  _ years  _ next door.

Hank snorted in agreement, then went “ah ha!” as he finally got ahold of his keys. He started to unlock the door. “Yea, kid is probably knitting a map of the United States or something...”

Hank swung the door open and the two of them stepped inside, only to pause near the coat stand. Jeffery was impressed he hadn’t done something cliche like drop his suitcase at the nonsense going on in the living room. Maybe he was just numb to bullshit these days. Or numb to Connor’s antics. Hank was definitely both, as he merely let out a deep sigh and muttered, “They better not had torn up my good chair, damnit.”

The sofa, loveseat, the coffee table and corner tables, and Hank’s precious leather recliner, were all pushed and stacked against the walls, presumably to make as much room as possible. Sumo was laying on the counter, calm and pleased as could be watching the show at such high altitudes. Connor and his brother (Nines? The other android had only come to the office once to drop off Hank’s forgotten lunch) were dueling with lightsabers. Impressively,  _ frightfully _ , realistic looking lightsabers. They were even making that  _ vrummmummmmm FVISH _ noise as the blades cut through the air and connected with each other.

Jeffery wondered if this was the work of some expensive online craft store, or Connor’s infamous hidden Forge.

Connor had done three corkscrew flips, his lightsaber coming down on Nines’ at each turn, the RK900 meeting each attack with a block and an easy step back. At the last strike Nines managed to knock Connor’s green saber to the side to break his streak, and swung his saber down. Connor met it with an upward block, and it was there the two stayed locked in place, pushing up and downward respectively. Behind them, the T.V. was paused, displaying Count Dooku and Yoda locked in the exact same position, as if saying “ _ why yes, kids  _ ** _will _ ** _ try this at home” _ . 

It was Connor who noticed they had an audience first, seeing as he was facing there direction and Nines had his back to them. His brown eyes went wide and gasped like a telenovela actress caught in the act. At his older brother’s started reaction, Nines smoothly twirled his red lightsaber as he whirled around, holding it at the ready.

Jeffery had to admit, the android actually looked pretty intimidating, even when he relaxed his stance once he recognized them as a non threat. Though, he was pretty sure the guy would look intimidating wielding nunchucks with stuffed animals at the ends.

“Captain Fath - Captain Da - Pa - FUCK!”

“Captain Fuck? That’s new,” Jeffery said to Hank, eyebrow lifted in amusement.

“Using that one,” Hank said without missing a beat.

Connor looked like he would like nothing more than to be crawling in a vent right about now. “I am... _ so _ sorry, Captain.”

Jeffery shrugged. “Don’t be sorry. It’s your house - if you want to sword fight it’s not my business.”

“UH. No. It’s  _ our  _ house, and I get a say in if there’s gonna be lightsaber battles - ‘the fuck am I saying!? What the hell are you guys doing in here? Whatever you’re arguing about is not worth bashing each other in the head - ”

“We were not arguing,” Nines cut in, looking offended at the very prospect of being in a dispute of any sort with his brother, let alone trying to fight him. “We were merely hypothesizing whether the choreographed fight between Count Dooku and Yoda in Star Wars Episode Two was replicable in a real life setting.”

“Which, as you saw, we proved was entirely possible,” Connor jumped in, eager to distract them from his latest slip in adopting every person he meets. 

“I disagree,” Nines said. “You jumped off of the wall to execute your sixth triple front flip, Yoda did no such thing.”

“We agreed to equate fictional objects with real ones.”

“The angle of the wall is not equivalent to the angle of the spaceship wing.”

“It’s only off by two percent!”

“Two percent is not one hundred percent, brother - ”

“Alright alright enough! This argument is so nerdy it’s poisoning my liver, Jesus. AH!” He said as Nines opened his mouth, likely about to make some snarky remark about Hank’s alcohol intake. Jeffery also remembered that the younger android was far more caustic than Connor. “I don’t wanna hear it. Now come on, hand ‘em over.” Hank held out his hands expectantly.

Nines and Connor, Jeffery was surprised to see, handed the lightsabers over with no fuss - Connor mildly contrite and Nines bored bordering condescending. There was a bet going around the office that Connor, being so agreeable at work, would surely be a little hellion in his off hours. Jeffery had been in the “little hellion” camp, but clearly Connor was somewhere in the middle of “create your own George Lucas action sequence in the middle of the night” and “listen to your dad when he says hand over the lightsaber.”

He’d have to petition to put in a new category on the white board.

Instead of sending them to their rooms without thirium cookies or however the fuck you grounded your adult android children that could easily crack your skull in half, he glanced at the lightsabers clenched in each of his fists, shot a look at Jeffery, and then rolled his wrists so that the sowrds twirled in his hands expertly.

“Now, everybody knows the Yoda versus Dooku fight isn’t the one you wanna replicate for an experiment.” He held out the green sword to Jeffery, eyebrows raised expectantly. “What do ya say Jeff? Wanna school these little shits and show ‘em how it’s  _ really  _ done?”

Jeffery raised his eyebrows back. One wouldn’t know it looking at the two of them, but this shit right here was pretty much the foundation of their friendship. How else would a highschool Freshman and Senior end up hanging out together, but through the harrowing bonds forged by being the only members of the Stars Wars Club?

Jeffery put down his suitcase and took hold of the lightsaber, giving it his own twirl. It made a very satisfying  _ vrwoom _ sound. “Just don’t pull your back out old man.” Jeffery slashed the sword through the air a few times and took a familiar, defensive stance. Heh, still got it.

“Say  _ whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat _ ?” Connor said faintly, eyes alight with wonder and smiling so wide that he was the near mirror image of the “:D” emoticon. Even Nines’ “resting killing face” had turned into “resting slight interest face”.

Hank held his lightsaber out in front of him. “What, you sayin’ this isn’t covered in our workers comp?” Another beam exploded out of the other side of his hilt. And...hum. Now Jeffery was all the way sure Connor had made these. 

He was also now relatively  _ unsure _ that these weren’t made of real plasma.

Jeffery and Hank circles each other slowly, swords chopping the air as they easily slipped into the steps of the old choreography. Connor and Nines had seated themselves against the wall, as out of the way as they could possibly be. Connor had his knees pulled to his chest and was bouncing up and down in excitement as if this were the best thing he had ever seen in his short existence. Jeffery would’ve liked to take a picture, if he wasn’t so preoccupied doing goofy shit as well.

“Pay close attention Nines,” Connor stage whispered. “This is all very cool.”

“Is it?” Nines deadpanned, which didn’t sound sarcastic as such, but more deeply  _ deeply _ confused.

“Fucking right it is.” Hank’s smirk abruptly switched to a hard scowl, as he suddenly bellowed; “All women are queens!!!!”

Jeffery snorted. What were they, eight? Nevertheless, he was having a lightsaber fight in the middle of his subordinate’s living room, with his subordinate, while two androids and a dog looked on. So, like many times before in the past, Captain Jeffery Fowler bellowed in kind; “If she breaths, she’s a thot!!!!”

Nines furrowed his brow. “I don’t recall this line recital in Episode Two.”

“It’s called improvisation, an art often utilized when stage resources are low.”

It was called being two dumbasses entirely too old for this shit and the main reason they had been the only members of the Star Wars Club, but Jeffery wouldn’t ruin Connor’s big brother moment. 

Jeffery hadn’t known what to expect when he had taken Hank’s offer as a temporary roommate. Maybe they’d watch ESPN over some beers, or if they were feeling particularly adventurous, dust off the billiards table in the garage. Reenacting the Qui-Gon Jinn and Darth Maul duel had not been on his list of 30 minute long activities before they went to sleep. Or ever. In life.

Jeffery’s friend ten years ago would’ve jumped into this kinda shit, as unironic as his garbage fashion choices. As the room filled with the  _ vrummm vrumm  _ of their clashing sabers, and Connor wirelessly turned on Duel of the Fates on the radio, and as fucking annoying as that friend from ten years ago could be, Jeffery was damn glad to see him coming back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one was a bday gift fic for the lovely @anxiety-incarnated

**Author's Note:**

> For more updates, fic shorts, headcanons, asks, and other nonsense check out my tumblr at: https://emiliaf25.tumblr.com/


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